* * *
It happened on a Tuesday.
Alex and Cassie had been stuck in the computer lab since school let out, working on a PowerPoint presentation for their economics class. The computer science teacher, Mr. Hanson, had gone home an hour earlier, leaving them alone in the lab to finish their report.
At least they were alone… until the door opened and a couple of students came stumbling though.
Alex had been standing by the printer, copies of their PowerPoint slides still warm in her hands, when she noticed them—a rather familiar looking couple, six feet away and frenching the life out of each other. His arms were wrapped tightly around her waist and her mouth seemed to have been permanently adhered to his.
A full five seconds passed before her brain managed to process what she was seeing.
Jessica and Conner had slipped into the computer lab, assuming it was empty, and were well on their way to a serious make-out session.
“Oh. My. God,” Cassie managed.
Suddenly realizing they weren’t alone, Connor broke off the embrace and pushed Jessica to arms length. His face flushed bright red as a look of panic flickered in his expression.
Jessica, on the other hand, appeared smug.
“I can explain!” said Connor.
Alex couldn’t find her voice to speak, but she didn’t have to. Her best friend did it for her.
“You lousy, cheating, jerk!” Cassie spat, leaping to her feet and shoving the rolly chair under the desk with a little too much force. “How could you? And with Jessica Huffman? Could you have picked anyone skankier?”
“Who are you calling a skank?” Jessica shot back.
Cassie and Jessica’s argument faded into the background as Connor finally turned to face her. As their eyes met, something inside of Alex snapped.
At first, she assumed that the unfamiliar sensation coursing through her was simply the shock that came from seeing her philandering boyfriend in the arms of another girl—but that assumption didn’t last long.
As the feeling intensified, the air around them grew thick with the smell of ozone and the tingle of static electricity.
Before Alex could make sense of what was happening, a bolt of electricity arced from an electrical socket on the far side of the room and slammed into the nearest computer. One by one the computers shorted out, the surge of electricity working its way toward them in a wave of blinding light and shattering glass.
Cassie jumped out of the way and pressed herself against a window as the surge passed by.
Alex could see the wave getting closer, could hear the strange whirring noise coming from the printer in front of her, but her feet were frozen in place. Her mind screamed at her muscles to move, but all she could manage was a surprised gasp as the wave of destruction reached the computers across the aisle.
“Lexie, look out!”
Connor slammed into her as the printer exploded into flames. The next thing she felt was the jagged corner of a waist-high filing cabinet tearing through her right side.
She cried out in shock and pain and only barely registered the impact when she and Connor landed in a heap on the linoleum floor.
Outside in the parking lot, half a dozen car alarms wailed to life. All Alex could hear, though, was the ringing in her ears.
When she opened her eyes she found Connor kneeling next to her, staring blankly at her stomach.
“Are you okay?” asked Alex.
Connor looked up. “Am I okay?” He seemed surprised by her question. Alex struggled to sit up, but Connor held her still. “Lexie, stop! Don’t try and move.”
“But I need to check on Cass,” she protested.
Cassie was hurrying toward her, grabbing a discarded sweatshirt along the way. “Don’t move, Alex,” she said.
Confused, Alex looked down to see what it was about her stomach that had so captured everyone’s attention.
Shaking fingers traveled to her waistline. A steady flow of blood was pouring from a gash across her abdomen, turning her white cotton shirt a muddy shade of crimson.
Cassie knelt beside her and pressed the sweatshirt hard against Alex’s side.
Her memory went a little hazy after that.
According to Cassie, it took Connor less than a minute to put out the flames of the printer and the smoldering computers thanks to a nearby fire extinguisher. The paramedics Cassie called arrived minutes later and whisked Alex off to the hospital for a blood transfusion and eighteen stitches.
Since she wasn’t family, Cassie hadn’t been allowed to ride in the ambulance. Instead she’d been stuck at the school with Connor and Jessica, explaining to Principal Snyder what had happened. Despite Jessica’s attempts to implicate Alex, the accident was eventually ruled to be the result of a freak power surge.
Officially, that was the story.
Unofficially, Jessica wasted no time in telling half the school about Alex’s “bizarre psychotic episode” wherein she had tried her best to murder Jessica and Connor, in true Carrie-at-the-prom fashion. Jessica creatively edited the details to make the tale more believable, but in the end, Alex had still been branded a freak.
With Connor’s testimony supporting the claims, Alex’s social standing went up in flames faster than the Hindenburg. She’d gone from social elite to social pariah before she could even be discharged from the hospital.
It didn’t help that she’d been trapped at home for the next two weeks while she recovered from her injury. Without Alex there to defend herself, the rumor mill ran wild.
Aunt Cil had spent the entire two weeks glued to her side, insisting that Alex stay off her feet so that she could heal. She’d always been something of a worrywart when it came to Alex’s well-being. It was a maternal and over-protective side of her personality that stood in contrast to her normally carefree nature.
Cecilia Cross was about as free-spirited as they came. As a professional artist, Cil had earned quite a name for herself in their small, seaside community. Her tiled sculptures and handmade porcelain pottery often fetched a pretty penny in the busier galleries down on the boardwalk.
Like most artists, Cil had that quality about her that occasionally left you wondering if she was really there with you, or if she’d slipped into some other world entirely. There were times when they’d be in the midst of a conversation and Alex would start to suspect that, in her mind, her aunt had already disappeared into the small workshop that stood behind their blue, two-story Victorian home, in order to plan out her next creative project.
Before becoming Alex’s guardian, Cil had embraced a much more bohemian lifestyle. At 27, she’d long since decided to put off starting a family of her own and, instead, had thrown herself into her artwork. The “white picket fence, 3.2 kids and a dog” mentality that her older sister had so readily embraced had been a foreign concept to her.
Then, shortly after Alex turned four, wet roads and a drunk driver had taken the life of Cil’s sister and brother-in-law, leaving young Alex with a single living relative—her Aunt Cecilia.
That had been 12 years ago.